Significant Digits For Friday, May 11, 2018

You’re reading Significant Digits, a daily digest of the numbers tucked inside the news. Some personal news first, though: I’m leaving FiveThirtyEight soon to start a forthcoming daily newsletter, Numlock News. SigDig will absolutely continue with a new writer, but if you’ve been a fan of my run please subscribe.

18 percent

The summer movie season this year is absolutely stacked, and — given last year’s mid-summer flops — analysts anticipate an 18 to 20 percent increase at the box office compared to 2017. If eight sequels on the schedule sell 80 percent of the tickets sold by their franchises’ respective predecessors, that alone would be worth $2 billion domestic — about a fifth of 2017’s total. [The Wall Street Journal]

28 miles per hour

The diplomatic liaison between North Korea and South Korea has thawed relations between the countries, and President Moon Jae-in presented North Korean leader Kim Jong-un with a plan to link the two nations economically. That plan includes the South potentially aiding the North in upgrading its rail system. Trains carry 90 percent of North Korea’s cargo and 60 percent of its passenger traffic, but the system is in such a state of disrepair that the fastest train — which connects Pyongyang to the Chinese border — runs at only around 28 miles per hour. [The New York Times]

30 percent

According to Electronic Entertainment Design and Research and PricewaterhouseCoopers, that’s the percentage of the video game industry’s revenues that were derived from mobile games in 2017. In 2012, that figure stood at a mere 9 percent. Industry revenues are rising year over year, largely fueled by growth in the mobile space. [Morning Consult]

31 percent

An analysis by the Center for Responsive Politics found that 31 percent of the money donated to House candidates this cycle so far has been from women, up from 27 percent in 2014, the last midterm election. [USA Today]

7,500 reviewers

Facebook is trying to stop terrorist groups from publishing content that attempts to recruit or radicalize people, but new groups are still using the platform to further violent goals. For instance, Hezbollah news site Al-Ahed had a Facebook page with over 33,000 followers, and another Al-Ahed page had 47,000. Facebook has 7,500 content reviewers, 40 percent more than last year, but this kind of pervasive content is difficult to control and repeatedly pops up. [Bloomberg]

$30 million

Following a personally delivered plea from Speaker Paul Ryan, Sheldon Adelson, who owns casinos, gave $30 million to the Congressional Leadership Fund, a GOP-aligned super PAC. [POLITICO]